Medical centers ban smokes

Triangle hospitals join growing list

All of the hospitals in the Triangle will go 100 percent smoke-free starting today.

Smoking bans will be enforced at Duke University Health System, which includes Duke Hospital, Durham Regional and Duke Raleigh Hospital; UNC Health Care System, including UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill, Rex Healthcare facilities in Wake County and Chatham Hospital in Siler City; all WakeMed Health & Hospitals, including the main WakeMed campus in Raleigh, plus satellite hospitals and clinics in Zebulon/Wendell, Cary, Fuquay-Varina, North Raleigh and Clayton; and North Carolina Specialty Hospital in Durham.

All have joined a growing list of North Carolina hospitals that have implemented the policy, which bans smoking on all hospital property, including parking lots, sidewalks and lawns.

The hospitals combined have about 40,000 employees and 3 million annual patient visits.

WHAT PROMPTED THE POLICY? A 2006 report by the U.S. Surgeon General on the effects of second-hand smoke helped push officials at WakeMed to implement the policy, says Barbara Bisset, co-leader of the hospital's tobacco-free committee. The state's first total ban at a hospital began in 2003, and about 100 of the state's 134 acute-care hospitals have either passed the policy or will soon do so, according to N.C. Prevention Partners' Healthy Hospital Initiative.

HOW WILL IT BE ENFORCED? Signs have been posted on hospital grounds. Violators will be asked "politely" to extinguish their cigarettes, officials said. At WakeMed, the policy and a stop-smoking hot line number are printed on business cards.

WHEN WAS ALL THIS DECIDED? The hospitals announced the plan last year. It went into effect today.

WHAT HAS BEEN THE REACTION? Positive mostly, say officials. But "it will be a challenge for those [employees] who smoke and choose not to quit," said Lynn Wooten, a spokesman for UNC Health Care.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? Each of the hospitals will provide tobacco-cessation programs. Jennifer Hastings, prevention and communications manager for N.C. Prevention Partners, said the goal is to have all of the state's hospitals tobacco-free by June 2009.

WEB SITE: For more information, visit www.healthyhospital.org.